


Simmer Down and Pucker Up

by bettervillains



Series: Wool Skirt/Leather Jacket [1]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 13:33:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7620040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettervillains/pseuds/bettervillains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Erin," Holtz murmured, smirking, "You're, uh, gettin' a little close to the gals there." </p><p>Erin looked down. Her hand had wound up flattened against Holtzmann's collarbone, fingertips pressing, a dull ache from the dig of the screw into her palm. </p><p>When she looked up again, Holtz wasn't laughing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simmer Down and Pucker Up

**Author's Note:**

> I have returned from my personal hiatus of fanfic and now with a new fandom. Probably will get back to Wayhaught eventually. 
> 
> Also, Holtzmann has two Ns. Who knew? I didn't, and had to go back and edit every time it appeared. Which is a lot.
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

Erin Gilbert wasn't used to being understood. 

Recognized, sure, by family, colleagues, friends even — and now known, by colleagues that had become family and friends...

But understood? 

She fumbled with the keypad to the fire station, thumb half numb with that last drink the group of delighted, post-near-apocalypse New Yorkers had bought for her and Abby and Patty and Holtz. They'd been recognized, against all odds, against the change in hair colors and little accurate media coverage... Erin smiled. 

On the third try, the door beeped and unlocked. 

They'd been recognized. They'd been thanked. It felt better than she could have ever imagined. Some greedy, ghoulish corner of her mind hoped it would never end, that there would be enough fame to last a few lifetimes. She waved it away, and made her way up the stairs. 

Because recognition wasn't important — she almost mumbled it aloud, chased it with, "it's for science, it's about the science," as her foot caught on the top stair. She snorted a laugh, catching herself on the bannister. A mental note plastered itself in her hippocampus — water and Advil before any attempt at sleep. Hangovers were almost as bad as —

She froze. From under the door of Holtzmann's lab, an eerie green light. 

Self preservation almost sent her running. Common sense, though half asleep in the witching hour of early midnight, tugged at her to go... But it was that same curiosity, the same piqued interest in the metaphysical which had driven her to her fields of study that pushed her towards the door, her fingers towards the handle, a deep breath —

She pulled it open, teeth clenched, and her expression melted into bewilderment. 

A pair of legs, in a now familiar jumpsuit, stuck out from under the workstation heaped with experimental equipment. Erin crept closer. 

"Holtz?"

The woman in question rolled out from under the desk on a scooter, the chipped plastic kind Erin hadn't seen since middle school, since just before her family had put her away for the summer at the —

"What are you doing here? I thought we were all going home?" 

Holtz grinned, holding up a piece of fabric between two comically large gloves. 

"I had an idea in the bathroom at the bar when I heard this girl throwing up and she kept on rambling on about her dress being ruined and I thought what if there was some sort of coating I could apply to the suits to resist the ecto-projection goo that seems find you absolutely irresistible?"

She winked. Erin blinked. 

"Okay..."

"So I started experimenting with various cocktails and I'm using neon to track the chemicals — wouldn't want that pretty face to meet a positive metastatic melanoma biopsy, would we?"

She vanished back under the workstation, and Erin kneeled down. There was a warmth in her cheeks that she named proximity to the sleeker proton pack on the table, a tingling in her fingers —

"Gilbert?"

She blinked. Holtz had emerged, waving her hand in front of her face. 

"Forgot my keys," Erin mumbled. "Can't get home. They're around here somewhere..."

"I don't think you should be driving at all."

Erin didn't reply. Her eyes had trailed down the ionic column of Holtz's throat, to where the half unzipped jumpsuit and the tank top underneath revealed a parabola of collarbone and sternum, and the U that was suspended there on a chain. 

"School necklace?" Erin murmured, fingers reaching out to touch, to run her thumb over the —

"Screw you."

Erin's eyes shot up to Holtz's, forehead creased in confusion, stomach tight. 

"What?"

"Screw you. It's a screw and a U it's... funny..."

Erin fidgeted, managed a distant laugh. 

"I thought — I thought you were asking me to —"

Holtz blinked. 

"To like —" she smiled, dumbly, at the curve of Holtz's Cupid's bow. "Well, screw you." 

Holtz was silent for all of a nanosecond, then bellowed, a warm thunderclap of a laugh, "If anything, it'd be the other way around, Gilbert." 

Erin swallowed, as the breath left her lungs like a shot. Common sense didn't seem so common, or so sensible — any rule she'd held to in the past about the messy mess of messing around with colleagues evaporated, and in its wake was Holtzmann, the wisps of her hair, the curve of her lips, the soft warmth of her skin under her fingertips —

"Erin," Holtz murmured, smirking, "You're, uh, gettin' a little close to the gals there." 

Erin looked down. Her hand had wound up flattened against Holtzmann's collarbone, fingertips pressing, a dull ache from the dig of the screw into her palm. 

When she looked up again, Holtz wasn't laughing. Something had shifted behind her eyes, like it had during her pub proclamation that she'd at last found her people, glass trembling in her hands, something serious and deep and extraordinary, god, so extraordinary — 

The space of a breath was all it took, and Erin kissed her. 

She'd done it, once before, for a play, a brief scene on stage with another woman that'd she'd go on to call "experimenting" at parties where she wanted to fit in — but there was no lying to scientists, the people who knew what experimenting meant, and the long, arduous process it invoked. 

Holtzmann was warm, soft. Tasted, somehow, like salted caramel. Warm, and soft, and kissing her back — Erin's heart pounded, almost out of her chest at god, she was kissing her back —

She broke away, breath stuttering, "I don't know why I did that —"

"I do," Holtz murmured, coy. Her eyes were pointed, sharp, focused in a way that would have been frightening if pointed at anything worth destroying. 

"I don't do that," Erin stammered, "I haven't — well, I mean, once, but —"

"Twice, now." 

"Okay, but —" 

"Hand me that box behind you."

Erin blinked, reached for a container far heavier than it appeared, watched as Holtzmann deposited her gloves and the scrap of neon fabric into it, snapped it shut, and kicked it away. 

"What —" Erin began, but then Holtz's hands were on her jaws, fingers curling into her skin and she was drawing her in, close enough to smell the smoke of soldering in her hair, close enough to kiss. 

"Safety first," Holtz murmured, and then she was kissing her again, and Erin's mind dissolved into a kaleidoscope of color and sound and breath. 

The heat rose through her stomach, through her chest, to the back of her neck where Holtz's hand rested, now drifting up to flatten in her hair, gently forming a fist to tug her head to one side, to press her lips to where Erin's pulse thundered under flushed skin. Her eyes drifted shut. 

"I understand," Holtz murmured, and a timid, desperate moan escaped the barrier of Erin's teeth, jaw tight, "I understand." 

The world spun — or else, it didn't, and she was being laid back, vertigo be damned — she opened her eyes again, and could see nothing but Holtz and the ceiling, the cluttered floor of the lab under her herringbone jacket and skirt, with Holtzmann frowning down at her clothes. 

"I mean, I dress in layers, too, it's New York, it's October, I get it — but, Gilbert, c'mon, this is ridiculous."

Erin said nothing, just pulled at the buttons of her jacket, tugged each one free of its clasp until it was laid aside. It felt vaguely surgical, like pulling herself apart, vulnerable, with Holtzmann's eyes on her, sharp and dark as if studying, unblinking. 

"Better?" 

Holtz hooked her finger under the buttons of her shirt and tugged. The buttons ripped, hanging on by loose threads, as Erin began an indignant "Hey!", which Holtz swallowed in a long kiss. 

When at last they parted, breathing hard, Holtz leaned down, fingers trailing up her calf, over her knee, lips finding the spot she'd marked red on her neck just moments before, to murmur in her ear, "It'll do. For starters." 

There was a lilt to her tone, a lightness that gave Erin some strange sense of courage. It had all happened so slowly, gently... but entropy demanded that could not last. 

Timidity be damned. 

Erin tugged her up to meet her lips again, half sprawled upright and half prone, yanking down the shoulders and sleeves of that damnably sturdy jumpsuit, biting back a groan as Holtz's fingers trailed higher, up her thigh —

"Either you're gonna have to scooch a little," Holtz muttered, all dry throat and husky vowels, "Or I'm gonna have to cut these off." 

"Scooch —?" Erin groaned, "What are you, twelve?"

Holtzmann snapped the band for emphasis. Erin yelped, but shifted all the same, cheeks reddening as Holtz tugged them down, tossing them aside — 

It was a blur after that — kiss after kiss, marks left on her chest and fingers all too used to hours holding irons and pliers, hands capable of handling heat, pressure, delicate, sensitive materials — a brief interlude as a wrench skittered across the floor when Erin's arm lurched away from propriety, the sheer divinity of Holtz's fingers closing around her wrist as she kissed down her stomach, holding her in place. 

Grounding. Erin smiled, remembering —

"Do you," she laughed, " — do you know your iron level?"

Holtzmann grinned, just before disappearing beneath Erin's skirt. 

"Where are you go — oh."

Timidity be damned. She felt Holtz take hold of her thigh, lifted it to help. Her arm flexed under Holtzmann's grip, eyes wide, chest heaving —

"That's —"

Her breath released in a stuttered exhale to rival her finest fourth grade asthma attack. From between her thighs, Holtz murmured, "Simmer down." 

The idea was ludicrous, not with the warmth of Holtz's breath against her, the tantalizingly too slow tug of her teeth, the almost feral flick of her tongue —

It was over too quickly, earth quaking beneath her skin, stomach tightening and releasing, the gauge of her veins maxing out, whistling, bursting —

When the fog cleared from behind her eyes, Holtz had her arms around her, damp fingertips tapping an errant rhythm against her stomach. Erin's nose brushed the necklace, fingers reaching up, finding her jaw. 

Holtz looked down, glanced at her watch. 

"I have to go."

Erin blinked. "Right. Yeah." 

Holtz's hand fell still, resting against her stomach. 

"I have a cat." 

It was a quiet revelation. Timid. Erin bit her lip, but it didn't help. She snickered. 

"Just one?"

"He gets sad if I don't come home. And hungry." 

"Okay." 

They sat there for a long moment, Erin holding her jacket to her chest, covering the shredded mess of her shirt...

"Do you," Holtz fidgeted, cleared her throat, "Do you want to come with?"

Erin smiled, nodded. Perhaps it was messy, but she had a feeling it was worth it...

...even worth the next week and a half they spent trying to explain how her underwear wound up beneath Holtzmann's desk.


End file.
